The Soviet Secondary School

Dora Shturman, Philippa Shimrat

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138544154
• eBook ISBN: 9781351004527
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Originally published in 1988. The Soviet secondary school is an important topic for comparative educationalists and also for political scientists interested in how the Soviet education system shapes the outlook of Soviet children. This book charts developments in the Soviet secondary school, beginning in the prerevolutionary period and coming right up to the present. It shows how the system was radically changed at several different points. The author, who emigrated to Israel from the Kharkov district in 1977, has considerable personal experience of the system as school-girl, teacher, director of studies and headmistress and this experience naturally colours and enriches her analysis.

Chapter One

THE RUSSIAN SCHOOL BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

Liberal researchers into the pre-Revolutionary Russian school considered its history to begin in the 1860s, not because there were no schools in Russia before then, but because those were the years when ‘the initiative and leadership in this matter gradually began to pass from the hands of the state and government to the hands of society itself’.¹ Such a transfer was quite inconceivable a hundred years later during the liberalisation of the 1960s. The very concept ‘society’, as distinct from ‘state’, had not reasserted its right to exist during that second liberalisation of the 1960s. Whereas the liberalisation of the 1860s under Alexander II was a democratisation, i.e. an increase in society’s independence from the machinery of state power, by contrast, Khrushchev’s liberalisation of 1954–64 was an attempt to make the regime better than under Stalin, but it in no way signified a growth in society’s freedom from the regime.

Although under Alexander I the village and town obshchiny and church parishes were responsible for maintaining schools of the first level, i.e. primary schools, according to pre-Soviet researchers there was already an extensive and real possibility for applying private initiative both in the organisation of schools and in designing their curricula. The state, however, did not oblige the obshchiny and parishes to open primary schools but left the matter to their discretion, and they showed little zeal in this direction until the 1860s. The provincial Gymnasia (classical high schools) and district schools were opened and maintained by the government itself. In 1828 Nicholas I introduced a compulsory statute on primary schools for the urban population, and in 1830 for the rural population, but only for the state and apanage peasants. The education of the serfs remained entirely dependent on the whim of the landowners. It should be noted that the higher strata of society were free to provide their children with independent education at home until they entered university or other institutions of education. I assume that this circumstance had quite a strong influence on Russian culture (and Russia itself) in the nineteenth century and on the world view of the Russian noble intelligentsia. Researchers note Nicholas I’s stubborn distrust of private and public initiative in the field of education, even primary education (to which the government itself paid very little attention). Even before the second half of the eighteenth century, however, the educated part of society was striving ever more persistently to gain control of the sphere of education and to impress on it the humanistic ideals that sector so clearly expressed. N. Novikov’s activity in the field of Russian schools played no small part in Catherine II’s repressive measures against him.

Despite the conflict between the regime and the public, moves towards independent education increased (with ups and downs) until the death of Nicholas I, though the conflict never took the form of a total prohibition or eradication of all non-state educational initiatives, as it did after October 1917.

Society’s interest in schools was growing irresistibly by the 1860s, along with all the other public interests, and was displayed by individuals and groups with very different views and tendencies. In the early 1860s several schemes (liberal, moderate, conservative and radical) aimed at reforming school education appeared in journals and as separate publications, most frequently concerning education of the masses (that is, primary education). These proposals examined the experience of a multitude of private schools with various systems of education, some of which had been in existence since the 1820s and had functioned for decades unimpeded and remained known to the comparatively narrow circle of people connected with them. This also applied to the landowners’ schools for serfs, whose quality depended on the cultural and moral level of the organisers and teachers. In the first half of the nineteenth century independent pedagogical, statistical and sociological research was already being carried out into schooling in the Russian Empire, including the non-Russian areas, which sometimes evoked an extensive public response.²

*

In the 1860s the problem of schools even rivalled the peasant question in popularity. The subject of schools, which for a while had taken second place in topicality to the peasant question, greatly agitated Russian society after the 1861 reform which abolished serfdom. If the juridical emancipation of the people proclaimed by the reform was to be realised, then cultural emancipation was also necessary.

One of the landmarks of the school-educational movement of the 1850s was an article by the noted doctor N.I. Pirogov, ‘Questions of life’.³ Soviet history of pedagogy usually refers to it only in connection with Dobroliubov’s criticism of some of Pirogov’s pedagogical views, in particular the fact that he condoned ‘moderate corporal punishment’ for pupils. However, apart from this view, which is unacceptable to a humane educator, Pirogov’s article contained a number of interesting psychological and pedagogical observations and recommendations. In its wake an enormous number of articles, brochures, collections of articles and journals appeared, all concerned with problems of teaching and education. This flourish of literary activity was followed by a spurt of organisational activity. The variety of ideas, projects and proposals reflected in the pedagogical journalism of those years found a natural practical outlet in a variety of types and forms of public education and enlightenment. There is much literary evidence of public, voluntary school experiments in the 1860s in Kharkov, Kiev, Ekaterinoslav, Moscow, St Petersburg, Perm, Ufim, Kazan’ and elsewhere (often in small district towns or even villages). This was a broad civil movement which could not but alarm the conservative sections of the state administration. The regulations, curricula and work routines of these schools were designed by the same enthusiasts (usually very well educated people) who opened them. This movement (and work) was joined by students, members of the free professions, clergymen, educated and liberal members of officialdom (sometimes fairly high ranking), landowners, etc. One of the first Sunday* schools in Perm was opened by the wife of the governor of Perm. In Kharkov the university helped to establish such schools by placing rooms and educational supplies at their disposal. There was a very wide variety of curricula, from those at the simplest primary level to ones that included two foreign languages, the principles of public medicine or first aid, chemistry, drawing, etc. The schools were run by councils of their teachers and founders and were financed by donations, aid, various kinds of exhibitions, shows, concerts, and so forth. The enthusiastic teachers who had any other source of income (no matter how modest) worked for nothing. The more well-to-do teachers were often donors as well. According to published data, there were 316 independent centres of primary education (apart from the official school network), mainly Sunday schools. One feature of these schools was particularly remarkable: they had a very high ‘density’ of teachers, quite unknown in the official schools. In Kharkov, for example, there was one teacher for every three pupils in the public schools. This shows what a large number of teachers, as well as just well educated people, were swept up by this wave of enthusiasm.

This fact is also of interest to the 1980s when the developed Western countries are going through a very grave crisis in education. At the same time, industrial workers in the highly industrialised countries are fighting automation which threatens to put them out of work. Unemployment, or underemployment, combined with the critical state of the schools and educational institutions, bears the seed of grave social instability. Meanwhile, the experience of the Russian (and not only Russian), pre-Revolutionary, independent public schools shows that education alone can absorb the entire labour surplus created by automated production. Research by Soviet educational psychologists in the 1960s came up with interesting conclusions which made a brief appearance in the specialist journals and were promptly dismissed as being impracticable. They recognised that the optimal number of children per group in kindergartens was between five and seven (at present the actual number is 25–30), and the optimal number of pupils per class not more than ten (the present size of classes is 35–40 pupils). If the crèches, kindergartens and schools were to receive the full complement of qualified educators and teachers for every 5–10 children, many problems of modern society would be resolved. Unfortunately, however, we give little heed to the most important problems of our social life.

Alexander II’s idyllic non-interference in the activity of the Sunday schools did not, however, last long. There were apparently two reasons for this: the first is noted by official Soviet histories of education (in the few cases where the public boom in education in the mid-nineteenth century is mentioned at all) and lies in the authoritarian nature of the Russian state administration to whose spirit the innovations of Alexander II and the progressives who surrounded him were intrinsically antipathetic. I shall consider the second reason for the administrative interference in independent school education in the 1860s and 1870s a little later. The Sunday schools were officially authorised in 1857 and shortly afterwards observers from the Ministry of Public Education began to be sent to them periodically. These observers were mostly people who knew very little about this matter which was new for Russia (except for its westernmost provinces). But the main trouble was that the goals of the schools’ organisers, and consequently the entire nature and structure of their activity, were utterly alien to the observers. After 1860 the Ministry of Education began to organise its own state Sunday schools. Then it compelled the private and public Sunday schools to adopt the curriculum of the state schools. This, of course, was not done because the observers were rarely present at lessons, but misunderstandings and conflicts became more frequent and repressive measures began to be taken against obstinate organisers and teachers in the public and private schools.

As early as the end of 1860 the Minister of Internal Affairs, Prince Dolgorukov, petitioned the liberal Tsar to increase surveillance of the Sunday schools. In 1862 the organisers of one of the St Petersburg Sunday schools was accused by the police of anti-government propaganda under the cover of school teaching. Similar accusations and incidents became more frequent, and in the second half of 1862 all the independent Sunday schools and public reading rooms where lectures and discussions were held were banned (except in the western provinces which had a long tradition of such institutions). The ban was declared temporary, until a special statute would be worked out, but this did not happen until 1914. True, the schools functioned and continued to appear, but their existence was based on compromises with the official organisations and on agreeing to the official curricula and inspection. Those public schools which tried to act independently continued to be in a state of tension and instability.

At this point I should like to return to the second reason for the conflict between the Russian public schools of the 1860s and the official educational organisations. The Sunday school episode was one of the numerous manifestations of the tragedy of Russian history of that decade. This tragedy is particularly important because in many respects it parallels the Russian tragedy of the second decade of the twentieth century – indeed, the socio-political situation in the world today possesses certain features of the same conflict. The situation which arose in Russia as a result of Alexander II’s reforms was difficult and complex, but not hopeless. It allowed for literary and practical discussion by various social groups and disputes with the government (within the bounds of loyalty, but very widely interpreted). In short, the influence of social-reforming tendencies and constructive governmental reforms was paramount. Indeed, an hour before Alexander II was assassinated by members of the People’s Will, he had signed Loris-Melikov’s draft constitution which opened up a wide field of action for the progressive ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary
• Introduction
• 1. The Russian School Before the Revolution
• 2. The Soviet School, 1917-1930
• 3. Secondary Schools Under Stalin
• 4. Schools in the Khrushchev Era
• 5. The Differentiation of Opportunities in Soviet Secondary Education
• 6. Some Trends in the Development of the School in the 1970s
• 7. The Soviet School in the Early 1980s and the Forthcoming Reform
• Conclusion
• Index